


Sing muse, for we will never be here again

by juurensha



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Aunt-Niece Relationship, Crazy training plans, F/F, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Mentors, Military Training, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 19:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juurensha/pseuds/juurensha
Summary: “Molded fromclay?” Antiope asked, looking at her sister incredulously, “She has seen your sand-castles right? You are definitely no Pygmalion.”





	Sing muse, for we will never be here again

**Author's Note:**

> So I wanted to write happy!fic about Antiope and Diana, and then I read that headcanon post about Antiope giving all the Amazons crazy training, and I was like YES. I take liberties with Greek mythology as the movie did.

Antiope had never understood her sister’s obsession with children. All of the Amazons had sprung out full-grown and ready to fight, and after looking at the squalling infants and snot-faced toddlers of the humans, Antiope was extremely thankful for that.

Hippolyta on the other hand always stared at the children with longing, and even after they had retreated to Themyscira and withdrawn from the world of men, she would look sadly at sketches others had made of their time there, sighing over the ones that showed children.

So maybe it was inevitable that one day Hippolyta would grab her hands, smiling radiantly and practically glowing, and announce that she is pregnant.

“ _What_?” Antiope asked, staring slack-jawed at her sister, “How—? Who—?”

(If Amazons could suddenly impregnate each other, this demanded an emergency announcement stat. Starting with Menalippe, because Antiope isn’t sure which of the two of them would be more pissed to have gotten impregnated by the other.

Oh gods, what if they were both pregnant?)

“Zeus,” Hippolyta replied, leaving Antiope with one worry assuaged but a possible migraine brewing.  

“ _Zeus?_ ” Antiope repeated, not bothering to keep her distaste off of her face or out of her voice, “Seriously, Hippolyta? _Zeus?”_

Hippolyta shrugged, “Well, he wanted a god-killer, and I wanted a child. It seemed a good compromise.”

Antiope shook her head sadly, “You better hope the child takes after you, or else we are going to have a lot of unhappy murderous Amazons once the kid reaches puberty.”

“She will be wonderful,” Hippolyta said confidently, resting a hand on her abdomen.

“You know it will be a girl?” Antiope asked, raising an eyebrow.

Hippolyta nodded, “It has been foretold. I think I will name her Diana.”

Antiope bowed her head, “That is a good name,” she said quietly.

(All the Amazons had loved the goddess of the moon and the hunt, Hippolyta perhaps much more than any of them.

Her sister had screamed and wept so many tears the day the goddess had been struck down by Ares that Antiope had feared Hippolyta would go mute and blind.)

So for the next nine months, Antiope holds her sister’s hair back as Hippolyta pukes into a bucket, helps on the search for the wild strawberries that Hippolyta is suddenly craving, and occasionally massages her sister’s swollen feet.

She’s still baffled by her sister’s burning desire for a child until after an hour of labor, Hippolyta gives birth to Diana, and Epione bundles up the squalling baby and offers her to Antiope.

Antiope’s hands always so sure and deft, now suddenly seemed too large and clumsy as she carefully cradled Diana and brought her closer to Hippolyta.

“Hello my love,” Hippolyta said, smiling and reaching out a trembling hand to brush against Diana’s gossamer-soft cheek.

And looking down at Diana’s small, innocent face, with the wide eyes of her sister and she assumes the dark hair of her father, Antiope’s heart melts when Diana smiles. Hippolyta coos, and Antiope finally gets it. She’d stare down armies for this girl, even if she still thinks that babies are surprisingly red and wrinkled and drooly.

(Babies grow out of that right?)

She immediately starting making plans for training the child named after their lost goddess of the hunt, but her sister sadly derailed that plan.

“Absolutely not,” Hippolyta said, pointing at the small wooden sword and shield Antiope had brought, “You are not giving her that.”

“Every Amazon has a sword and shield at birth!” Antiope protested.

“Every Amazon before Diana has emerged as an _adult,”_ Hippolyta snapped, trying to grab at the wooden sword and shield, “Diana is a child!”

“A demigoddess child!” Antiope pointed out, side-stepping her sister, “A child named after a master warrior! How will she face Ares—”

“She will _not_ ,” Hippolyta cut in with all the steel in her voice that made her their queen, “Ares was wounded grievously during that last battle. For all we know, Ares is dead.”

“You and I both know you do not truly believe that,” Antiope replied quietly.

Hippolyta’s mouth tightened, “Be that as it may, you’re still not giving that to her, Antiope. She can’t even sit up yet!”

“How about a bow?” she asked, setting the wooden sword and shield aside and pulling out a miniature bow with a tiny arrow.

Hippolyta looked at the ceiling, “Antiope, she can’t even _hold_ anything yet.”

“A lasso then?” Antiope said desperately, producing a short length of cord.

“Turn that into a jump-rope, and maybe,” Hippolyta conceded.

Antiope makes a face, but she does want Diana to have _something_ close to a weapon, so she concedes and sticks handles on the cord.

“I can’t believe she let you put that elephant you knitted in her crib,” she sulked in bed as Menalippe laughed.

“Don’t tell her, but it’s secretly a war elephant,” Menalippe mock-whispered and winked.

“This is why I love you,” Antiope said seriously, drawing her closer for a kiss.

“Flatterer,” Menalippe breathed against her lips as she curls herself around Antiope.

Still, even if Hippolyta bans toy weapons in the crib, Antiope draws up happy plans of training regimens for her niece when she is older. Unfortunately, Hippolyta nixes those as well.

“You want to throw her _off the cliff?_ ” Hippolyta repeated, fingers tapping against the pommel of her sword.

Antiope nodded earnestly, “Diving lessons! Should be fun for a kid—”

“ _No,”_ Hippolyta said, crossing her arms.

“Okay, fine; what about swimming lessons and punching sharks?”

Hippolyta shook her head, staring at Antiope, “She’s just learned to _walk,_ Antiope!”

“Horseback riding?” Antiope asked hopefully, “That’s safe, right? And after she learns to ride, we can work on doing it with a sword—”

“You can teach her how to ride; _not_ doing it with a sword or on fire or whatever else you’re planning Antiope,” Hippolyta warned her.

“Fire is only for the advanced class,” Antiope said reassuringly, although Hippolyta still looked displeased.

Despite Hippolyta being a killjoy, Antiope did have fun with her niece, who was growing into a cheerful, lively girl, running through the streets and fields of Themyscira, peals of laughter and dark hair flying behind her.

Diana claps her hands with joy when she introduces the girl to a dapple gray pony that her niece promptly dubs Cloud. She takes to her horse like a true Amazon and is soon galloping at Antiope’s side, whooping with delight and urging Cloud to go faster.

Although, Diana did have a few strange ideas.

One day she strode onto the beach and saw her niece kneeling down in the sand and busily making small forms out of clay from the cliffs.

“What are you doing Diana?” she asked, kneeling down and looking at the figures her niece was so diligently kneading.

Diana beamed, “I’m going to mold some babies, and then mother can get Zeus to breathe life into them, and then I’ll have siblings!”

“ _What_?”

(…she didn’t think Acantha would have shied away from explaining Diana the birds and the bees, but maybe with the current heated debate about whether or not they should try to capture some ostriches from surrounding islands to breed, Acantha had been distracted.

 _Really_ distracted.)

“I think I’d like a little sister,” Diana said, looking at the clay in her head contemplatively, “But a little brother could be fun too.”

“Well—you could—Diana, who told you this?” she asked, after pausing and trying to come up with something to say that wouldn’t dim Diana’s brilliant smile.

“Mother,” Diana replied easily, scooping up some clay and holding it out to Antiope, “Oooh, maybe you can make me a little cousin?”

“Thank you Diana, but I’m happy with just you,” Antiope said politely, closing her hand over Diana’s.

(Plus she’s fairly sure that even though Menalippe adores Diana, she’d try to pitch Antiope off of a cliff if she just showed up with a random baby without even asking her.)

“Molded from _clay?_ ” Antiope asked, looking at her sister incredulously, “She has seen your sand-castles right? You are definitely no Pygmalion.”

“You couldn’t have expected me to just tell her the truth,” Hippolyta said, waving a hand dismissively in the air.

“What, that you loved her so much that you actually went to Zeus’ bed for her?”

“The reason Zeus wanted her born,” Hippolyta replied sternly.

Antiope snorted, “You and I disagree about _when_ she will learn about that, but why tell her that you molded her out of _clay?_ ”

“I admit, I was hoping Acantha would explain all that to her in time,” Hippolyta said sheepishly with a wry smile.

“Poor Acantha; you need to give her a raise,” Antiope said, wrapping an arm around her sister’s shoulders.

“That I do. Do you think she wants a flock of ostriches?” Hippolyta asked hopefully.

Antiope groaned, “Oh no, don’t tell me you’ve gotten roped into that debate too.”

“I _am_ the queen after all,” Hippolyta said lightly, giving her a light push with her shoulder.

“Don’t you start; Menalippe has been campaigning for those damn ostriches for _weeks_ ,” Antiope complained.

Hippolyta laughed, “I hear you’re going to be doing drills with them, if we get them?”

“Well—observing ostrich kicks could be useful,” Antiope admitted, “But definitely don’t tell Menalippe that I said so.”

“My lips are sealed,” Hippolyta replied solemnly, miming zipping her mouth shut.

The ostrich plan goes through, although an unintended side-effect of getting ostriches seems to be Diana delighting in running away from Acantha and climbing over the fence into the ostrich pen to then attempt to ride the ostriches.

(She’s actually pretty good at it, and some of the younger Amazons join in the ostrich races.)

Antiope expects that after a few years Hippolyta will finally let her implement her long cherished and revised training plan for Diana, but instead Hippolyta closes off any discussion she tries to have with her about it with the cold glance she used to stare down any who dared to oppose her.

And Hippolyta is their queen and her sister, but Diana is both her niece and is destined for greatness. When Diana begs her for lessons, she caves immediately and arranges to meet her in the woods near the palace where she secrets caches of training swords and bows.

“She’s going to kill you, you know,” Menalippe said sleepily.

“You going to tell her?” Antiope asked, propping her cheek against her hand and looking down at Menalippe.

“She’s my queen, but you’re my general,” Menalippe said, rolling over to face Antiope, “But really, how long do you think you can really keep it a secret?”

“Long enough to at least give her basic skills,” Antiope replied, running a hand down Menalippe’s arm, “Diana’s a fast learner. She’s already figured out how to disarm an opponent!”

“Really? She can disarm you?” Menalippe asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, she’s mastered the technique. May take a few years for her to disarm me,” Antiope said modestly.

“She _is_ learning fast then,” Menalippe said, pillowing her head with her arms, “Do you think she can defend you against Hippolyta when she finds out?”

“It won’t come to that,” Antiope said confidently, burying her head in the crook of Menalippe’s neck.

It actually comes down to Hippolyta unhappily declaring that if Antiope is going to train Diana, she’s going to train her until she has surpassed every single Amazon on the island, including herself.

Antiope would expect no less and promptly starts pulling out all of the training plans for Diana that she has sadly shelved over the years due to having to train her niece in secret.

Of course, some parts of the plan don’t quite work on the island.

“I miss having bears,” she said, staring around at the peaceful green fields wistfully.

“I’m pretty sure you’re the only one,” Menalippe replied drily, planting her spear more firmly into the ground.

“You can’t have a proper survival course without bears,” Antiope continued mournfully, “Also, for best results, it’d really be nice to strand her in an arctic wilderness.”

“See, this is why the queen didn’t want you training her,” Menalippe quipped, shaking her head and laughing, “Well, we don’t have bears or snow, but we do have horses and pit-traps?”

Antiope sighed, “I guess that’ll have to do.”

“Artemis also has some ideas about catapults,” Menalippe said, “What if we tried an obstacle course with them?”

Antiope started to grin, “And launch some ostriches from them?”

“What? _No_ , why would we piss off ostriches we _own,”_ Menalippe protested, glaring at Antiope, “Some of us have to tend to the ostriches, Antiope!”

“True, sorry,” Antiope apologized, rubbing the back of her head, “No messing with your ostriches.”

“Quite right,” Menalippe said before continuing, “So Artemis was thinking that maybe we could put in some spiked boulders and—”

“And coat them with oil and set them on fire?” Antiope interrupted hopefully.

“…Artemis was thinking of coating it in stinging nettle, but if you think Diana is ready for flaming fireballs, sure,” Menalippe said with a shrug.

“I’m going to make her the best warrior there is,” Antiope declared, clapping Menalippe on the shoulder.

Menalippe chuckled, “I have no doubt of that, general.”

And Diana takes to the obstacle course like a duckling to water (as she should as Hippolyta’s daughter), grinning the entire time while dodging fireballs and sparring with Artemis.

“She will defeat Ares,” Antiope said confidently, watching with pleasure as Diana was fitted for proper gauntlets.

Menalippe smiled, “Because of your training.”

“Because of _our_ training,” Antiope corrected, knocking her shoulder against Menalippe.

“Our pride and joy,” Menalippe commented as Diana deflected an arrow with her new gauntlets.

“A wonder,” Antiope agreed, grinning as Diana performed a back-flip she had showed just a few days ago.

(Now if only she could kidnap some bears from the mainland.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! Please comment/leave kudos! 
> 
> So I know Diana is the Roman name, but given that there is already a character named Artemis, let's just go with that, shall we?


End file.
